Much of the electorate seems unwilling or too brainwashed to hold Bush accountable for what he’s done. And there’s plenty for him to be accountable for. Here’s some ABCs of the situation (with due credit for the concept to BushWars for its inimitable “A Child’s ABCs of Terrorism“):
A – Oh so many to begin with at the start. Let’s see… Abu Ghraib (stemming in part from a top-down culture of lawlessness), Afghanistan (abandoning pursuit of al Qeda to go after Saddam, leaving a breeding and training group for terrorists), Axis of Evil (hmm, seems like we went after the one that didn’t have WMD programs and let the other two further their nuclear weapons programs).
B – Budget buster. Under Bush, we have gone from a $236 billion surplus to confronting a $477 billion deficit, thanks in part to the Iraq debacle and blind adherence to giving tax cuts to the rich (his “base”).
C – Civil liberties. Actually, the assault on liberty.
D – Donald Rumsfeld; Dick Cheney. (Cheney, though, wins the face-off for also fitting under L for Liar).
E – Economic policy. We have lost more jobs under Bush than any president since the Depression.
F – Flypaper theory. Yep, if Iraq wasn’t full of terrorists before, it is now (along with the rest of the Middle East).
G – Guantanamo and the new military “justice” system.
H – Halliburton. The only victor (no bid, of course) in Iraq.
I – Iraq. They knew they were misleading us.
J – John Ashcroft.
K – Keeping secrets. Historians, legal scholars, journalists and political observers agree the Bush administration has been the most secretive in US history, a virtual cone of silence.
M – “Mission Accomplished.” Trying to use our troops and their efforts as a blatant political ploy that proved just as false as most of the other things he’s told the country.
N – Neocon agenda. The altar upon which support for the US and American troops have been sacrificed.
O – Osama and Ordnance. These two go together because they are emblematic of the Bush failures in prosecuting its war on terror. We didn’t catch Osama because we didn’t put our troops into the effort and our soldiers in Iraq and now being decimated by explosives that could well have come from sites we failed to secure because we didn’t have enough forces in the field.
P – Project for a New American Century (the guys who designed and implemented the neocon altar of regime change in Iraq; Patriot Act (see Civil liberties, erosion thereof)
Q – Quackery. What results when political and religious ideologies are more important than science.
R – Radical right turn. Bush ran as a moderate “compassionate conservative,” lost the popular vote and won in the Electoral College only because of a political decision by the US Supreme Court. Despite that, he has used his four years to embark this country on a radical right-wing agenda absent any mandate and through exploitation of Sept. 11.
S – Squander. What he did to the support the US had after 9/11, actually increasing hatred of the US throughout the world, particulary the MIddle East.
T – Terror alerts. The trump card when approval numbers are dropping or there’s been a few weeks of continuing bad press.
U – Uniter. He united Europe and, even more amazing, the Shia and Sunnis of Iraq. Unfortunately, he united them against the US.
V – Vietnam. I don’t mind he did his best to stay out. It’s the fact he lies about evading his duty
W – Women and children. The largest group in the 100,000 fatalities estimated by Johns Hopkins researchers to have been killed in Iraq since the invasion.
X – Camp X-ray. One of the first steps in detentions handled in a fashion that make a mockery of what the US should stand for in the eyes of the world
Y – Yellowcake. The falsehood that, when disclosed, required retribution to the extent of outing a CIA agent.
Z – Zealotry. Despite condemning religious extremists abroad, Bush advocates religious extremism himself.
